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111–117 of 117 posts

Re: Leave Facebook

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also disagree. The "curation" algorithms and other systems clearly have a serious influence. Facebook is not responsible for human nature, but they are responsible for intentionally guiding it for profit and ignoring the consequences. It's not as if Facebook is merely tabula rasa; they meddle. There have been many examples of executives and engineers who have spoken to this effect: https://www.businessinsider.com/f…

FB is the network of people on your green list, and FB's most pronounced "algorithmic" influence is deciding priority on a feed of your green-listed friends, but ultimately one has to ask -- can you handle your own relations? Are your friends' ideas just way too infectious for your free will to handle?

> Are your friends' ideas just way too infectious for your free will to handle?

Good point, but I'll add: if the ideas they are spreading weren't infectious, they wouldn't be spreading them in the first place.

I've been on FB lately because my local government has decided that it will use FB to give background info and outlooks wrt Covid-19. From what I saw in the local groups, the "ideas" people spread are not original content, ever. They don't have those ideas, they just read them and say "yeah, share", so the ideas that make it to your feed have proven themselves many times to be infectious. There's a reason we call it "going viral".

Re: Leave Facebook

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget WhatsApp. Many people I talk to don't realize it's also part of the FB ecosystem.

Unfortunately Android has screwed up here resulting in the rise of WhatsApp. There is no competitor of WhatsApp that has the same reliability. Also there is no feeds in WhatsApp, making it very different from Insta and FB. But it's still giving strength to the ecosystem.

>There is no competitor of WhatsApp that has the same reliability.

Riot? Telegram?

Re: Leave Facebook

#113

Why isn't there a social network that actually cares about society? I swear if one existed it would be gaining a million users a day right now. I'm dying to abandon Facebook, but --I hate to say-- it's the best way for me to stay in touch with international friends and family at the moment. Can't someone please create a simple facebook-style app that's not driven by profit? Please please please.

Mastodon? https://rmpr.github.io/Migrating-from-Twitter-to-Mastodon/

Re: Leave Facebook

#114
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's a really good point to bring up. Decentralization solves some problems but it doesn't automatically make everything better. An interesting example relevant to this case would be Mastodon: it's an alternative to Twitter where many instances federate together, and instances are allowed to do their own moderation. Many instances have much more protective rules than Twitter and have smaller communities tha…

To add on to Mastodon, Pleroma is another federated, decentralised platform with slightly different features as far as I'm aware. There's a whole ecosystem of decentralised alternatives out there, which you can check out at https://fediverse.party/ It's definitely not easy to get people to jump ship, but I've seen an influx of new users to the Mastodon instance I'm part of.

Many of the people joining the instance I'm part of had troubles getting started (follow people, What's going on, ...) I ended up writing a blog post https://rmpr.github.io/Migrating-from-Twitter-to-Mastodon/

Re: Leave Facebook

#115

Is there a significant amount of Facebook employees that are actually planning on leaving? From my experience money talks. Many people will use the logic of "if not me it will be someone else" for their cognitive dissonance to work at morally degenerate organizations. I'd be interested if there was a survey of current employees who would be willing to leave if another entity paid an analogous salary.

>Is there a significant amount of Facebook employees that are actually planning on leaving? Of course not. The proof is in the puddin'. There is, and never has been, a mass exodus of technical talent from these companies. And during this period there has been near constant hand wringing and crocodile tears about the evil things these companies do.

Especially now with the US economy in the toilet and unemployment numbers at astronomical levels. No mass exodus is going to happen unless people can easily move into another job.

Re: Leave Facebook

#117
post #113

Why isn't there a social network that actually cares about society? I swear if one existed it would be gaining a million users a day right now. I'm dying to abandon Facebook, but --I hate to say-- it's the best way for me to stay in touch with international friends and family at the moment. Can't someone please create a simple facebook-style app that's not driven by profit? Please please please.

Mastodon? https://rmpr.github.io/Migrating-from-Twitter-to-Mastodon/

I signed up for Mastodon. However it seems to be more of a Twitter clone than Facebook. I'm looking for a Facebook alternative.
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